What do you know that we do not know?: the two lines of verse 9 are parallel without any effort at raising the intensity, and Good News Translation reduces them to one. Line a echoes Job’s claim in 12.3b and 13.2a, where he said “I am not inferior to you” and “what you know I also know.” Neither Job nor his friends are winning this argument.

What do you understand that is not clear to us?: Hebrew does not say clear to us but “with us,” which some scholars take to mean that a person possesses a thing through knowledge of it. Translators must decide on the basis of style whether to translate verse 9 as questions or statements. As a statement verse 9 may be expressed, for example, “You know nothing that we don’t also know, and all that you understand is also clear to us.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, Wiliam. A Handbook on Job. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .